CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia’s governing board on Tuesday reinstated Teresa Sullivan, who was ousted without a vote earlier this month.
The 15-member Board of Visitors voted unanimously for reinstatement at the university’s historic rotunda.
Faculty, students and others had organized a demonstration outside the meeting to show support for the popular Sullivan, who became U.Va.’s eighth president and its first female leader in August 2010.
A majority of the 15-member board was needed to approve the reinstatement for Sullivan to remain in office. Sullivan declined to comment before the meeting through a media relations firm she has hired. Messages for board Rector Helen Dragas and the other board members weren’t immediately returned.
U.Va. officials announced June 10 that Sullivan would step down Aug. 15, surprising the university community and triggering an outcry over the lack of explanation about her forced resignation. Dragas since has said the university wasn’t acting quickly enough to address state and federal funding reductions, online education delivery and other challenges, but didn’t offer specific examples.
Sullivan had defended her performance at a board meeting June 18, outlining some of her initiatives since taking office, including hiring a new provost and chief operating officer and adopting a new budgeting model that decentralizes financial planning. She criticized the board’s “corporate, top-down leadership” as not being in the university’s best interests.
Critics compared how the board’s executive committee handled Sullivan’s abrupt firing to a coup d’etat, and said it violated U.Va. founder Thomas Jefferson’s stated principles of honesty, respect and honor. The move triggered online protests, gatherings that packed the historic grounds’ lawn, and calls by deans, faculty, students and alumni for the board to return her to office.
At last week’s marathon session, the board named U.Va. undergraduate business school Dean Carl P. Zeithaml to become interim president after Sullivan’s departure. But Zeithaml decided Friday to step aside until the resolution of Sullivan’s employment status.
Gov. Bob McDonnell, who appointed half of the board members, had said recently that he would seek the resignations of all the members if the group failed to resolve the controversy Tuesday.
Sullivan, 62, is an eminent scholar of labor-force demography. Before coming to Charlottesville, she served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan, another top public university.
